Frog's Leap, Rutherford, California, USA

March 10, 2012

The fact that I choose not to be stopped by that which can stop me,
doesn't mean there's nothing which can stop me.

In this
exuberant
game I'm playing called generating my own life, there are no
guarantees the mood I wake up into in the morning is consistent
with the way I want living my life to look. Given the nature of
human being, the mood I wake up into in the morning, isn't
reliable. From the moment I wake up, the day is a
blank canvas
to be
painted
newly and ongoingly. Unfortunately yesterday's successes don't
guarantee today's good moods.

Bad or good, the mood I wake up into, is
machine
generated. If it's a mood it's a mood. It makes no
difference if it's a bad mood or if it's a good mood. A mood is a
mood is a mood. In fact it's tantamount to seduction of the
machinery
to wake up into a good mood, and think it's something I've
done to have it be that way (bad moods, of
course, are always the fault of something or someone
else, yes? ...). Without my intervention in the process by creating
the day, I can't take any credit for the quality of
what happens after I wake up.

For nearly thirty years, I've stood up in front of groups of
technicians,
leading seminars
for many of the Fortune 1000 companies here in these
United States. During this time leading hundred of seminars, I
never once stood up in front of any of these groups - ever -
without being uncomfortably shy, without wanting not to be there,
without experiencing stage fright. You may think after a
while with so much practice, it would get easier, it would become
familiar territory, it would become a safe milieu - my
personal genre if you will.

But it never has. The uncomfortable shyness of speaking in front of
groups of people has never dissipated for me. And I don't mean just
from a podium in front of an auditorium. I mean in small groups too
- even those comprising just one other person.

If I've learned anything about being uncomfortably shy, it's that it
comes with the
machinery
of being human. It
shows up personal but
it ain't personal.
It's there in whatever form it's there when I'm with people, just like
the mood is there in whatever form it's there when I wake up in the
morning. If I don't generate myself strikingly bold at the start of my
day, what's left (as a default really) is being
uncomfortably shy. And if there's anything I've learned from being up
in front of so many audiences so often, it's that the only choice I
have is to be strikingly bold
in the
face of
being uncomfortably shy. If I don't generate being strikingly bold for
myself, it sure as heck ain't gonna come from the
machinery.

I got a lot from
skydiving
in this regard, particularly how much I honor, how much I lend credence
to the
machinery
in my life. The fact is you can drop a Sherman tank or
even a rhinoceros (or both) from an airplane on a
parachute, and they'll land safely. But the
machinery
and its cacophony of
fear
as you prepare to jump out of an airplane for the first time, won't
hear any of it. I asked my jumpmaster (he's the guy who
supervises the
skydive)
how long people take to get over their
fear.
He told me "If you ever get over your
fear,
I don't want you
skydiving
with me. People who don't have
fear
when
skydiving
are reckless and irresponsible, and are a danger to themselves and to
others. Having
fear
(in other
words,
being afraidand jumping anyway) is the appropriate relationship to
fear.
Not
being afraid
when you
skydive,
isn't just plain
stoopid:
it isn't even an option - especially on my airplane.".

Werner
Erhard,
it sounds to me, may have coached that jumpmaster on what
courage is. Courage isn't having no
fear.
Courage is
being afraidand jumping anyway. That's how I am about being uncomfortably
shy yet strikingly bold. I'm uncomfortably shy and I act
anyway - just as I don't allow the mood I wake up into in the
morning, to dictate my day.

You could say I have no choice as to the mood I wake up
into in the morning, just as you could say I have no choice as to
whether I'm uncomfortably shy, or not.

No, I assert I do have choice. Really I do. I have
two choices actually. The first choice I have when I'm
uncomfortably shy, is I can choose to be uncomfortably shy. The
second choice I have when I'm uncomfortably shy, the
mature choice I have when I'm uncomfortably shy, is I can
be generous and
freely
donate all my uncomfortable shyness to the
machine,
while I choose to be strikingly bold and act anyway.

It's never any easier (nor is it any harder) than this. It's never any
easier (nor is it any harder) than now.